A Tale of Cats and Cyberspace
by Woodfur
Summary: I bet you thought Nyan Cat was a good guy. You were wrong. The world is about to turn upside down as, each unbeknownst to the other, the Nyan brothers turn on their creators in a fight for dominance over the feline race. The Internet and reality become hopelessly intertwined as cats and humans alike suddenly find themselves fighting for their lives all across the globe.
1. Chapter 1

I stretch in my bed, noticing that the sun has moved. Drowsily I consider the options: if I move, I'll be in the sun again, but in order to do that I'd have to stand up. Too much work. I stay where I am, tucking my tail over my muzzle again and falling back to sleep.

As you may or may not have guessed, I'm a cat. Cocoa's the name. (Officially it's Sir Cocoa Fuzzykins IV, but don't you dare call me that. Ever.) I suppose you could say I'm laid back and sort of lazy. What house cat isn't?

But you don't want to hear about me, do you? You want to hear the story I have to tell. I'm getting to that. Give me time.

So eventually I wake up, and the first thing I realize is that I'm hungry. Is it worth it to get up, though? _Eh, I've slept enough already today._ I leap down from the bed (you people will probably insist that it's the humans' bed, but I beg to differ) and trot downstairs to the kitchen, where my food bowl is.

Crunching a mouthful of the hard pellets in my teeth, I relish the satisfied feeling as the first bite slides into my empty belly. This isn't my favorite brand, but it's still quite good. The tag on my collar clinks against the dish as I eat. I've never really figured out what the collar is supposed to be for.

Heavy footfalls sound above me, and I can tell they're Jennifer's - the woman of the household, I guess you can say. (No, she's not my owner and she's not my mom. I'm not an idiot.) I don't pay much attention. The humans go back and forth all the time, and I've learned to tune them out.

The food bowl is almost empty, and as I finish the last of the kibble, I consider whether it's worth going upstairs to have a word with Jennifer about it. I've satisfied the worst of my hunger already; it can wait, I decide.

I lap a few mouthfuls of water from the adjacent dish and then wander out into the living room, wondering what to do. What honestly is there for a cat to do besides sleep and eat? Not that I have a problem with that, though.

I decide to go back upstairs to see what Jennifer's doing. I find her in her study, sorting through pieces of paper and making red marks on them. They call her a teacher, though I don't fully understand what it is she does. I've tried to make sense of her red marks once or twice, but I don't think I'll ever know why humans do what they do.

I'm about to head back into the bedroom for another nap when Jennifer starts putting her papers away. I stop in my tracks and trot back in her direction, rubbing up against her leg in hopes of some attention. But Jennifer just smiles amusedly and briefly reaches down to scratch my head before pulling out her laptop.

So I hop up into her lap instead, not ready to give up so easily. As I plop myself on top of her, exposing my oh-so-convenient back for petting, Jennifer gives a defeated sigh and begins absently ruffling my fur with one hand while she pulls up Firefox with the other.

As she does, I notice a high-frequency noise coming from the computer that gets louder as the page loads. I've heard this sound before, one that's too high for humans' ears. Though it doesn't relate to me personally, it's a significant sound in the cat world. Let me take a brief moment to explain.

You've probably heard that the Internet is made of cats, but you probably never took it literally. Well, it's true. The Internet is composed of what were once living, breathing felines. Now they're cyber-cats.

It takes several million to run the web, and when there are too few for too long, the Internet stops working. There are plenty of unnatural ways to die in cyberspace, so they need a steady flow of new cats to keep the population up. That's where the high-pitched noise comes in: it's a message to all cats that they're short of internetz. Think of it as like a call to join the army.

If you're wondering, my mother explained all this to me when I was a kitten. That's one of the few things I remember about my mom. Every cat remembers their first Internet lesson.

I've never really given much thought to becoming a cyber-cat myself. I'm perfectly happy as a house cat; the lazy life suits me just fine. Let me tell you, though, that noise is beyond obnoxious. I twitch my ears in irritation, trying to tune it out, but eventually I have to get up and leave. It's just too annoying. I hope they get some extra volunteers soon.

What would happen if I _did_ decide to go? Not that I ever would, but I'm curious. I've heard that the transformation into a cyber-cat is a completely bizarre feeling. I wonder what the Internet is like from the inside. And what do cyber-cats even do? I've never been sure.

I shake my head, twitching my whiskers in amusement at my own thoughts. None of that has to do with me. I'm perfectly happy as I am. Presently I decide to go take another nap, since there's nothing else to do; I go into the master bedroom and lay down on the bed again. Clouds have covered the Saturday sun now, but still I enjoy the different sort of cheeriness that the bright gray sky brings as I close my eyes.

I find my thoughts lingering unusually long on the cyber-cats while I'm waiting for sleep to come. What is it like? Were any of them ever lazy house cats like me?

Again I tell myself I have no interest, but the more I think about the cyber-cats, the more the idea secretly begins to appeal to me. I keep driving away the thoughts, but they keep coming back, until finally I slip into a disturbed sleep full of visions of pixellated cat-spirits asking for cheeseburgers.


	2. Chapter 2

In the passing days, I eventually admit to myself that I'm considering becoming a cyber-cat. It's weird to think about; I've spent all my life assuming none of that has to do with me, and now here I am thinking about becoming involved in it. Becoming a part of the Internet.

The more I think about it, the more I start to realize how fun it could be. However little I know about the day-to-day life of a cyber-cat, I've begun to notice how monotonous my own life seems. It's not that I haven't known it's generally boring; I just haven't really cared. Until now. And suddenly I'm wondering how I've gone this long without any source of adventure or entertainment in my life.

But more than that, I realize that I'm _lonely._ I've lived with Jennifer and her husband Ray for as long as I can remember, and I love them almost as family - but I can't even remember the last time I saw another cat. Thinking about that suddenly makes me feel unimaginably alone here.

All the same, there would be negative consequences if I left, too. Jennifer and Ray would be heartbroken if I disappeared; I can't think of any way I could make them understand. And there are good things in this life as well. Nothing can ever replace being a living cat.

And there's always the fact that if I become a cyber-cat, I can never go back. The decision is final. That scares me.

And yet, as I think about it more and more, I start to feel like it's not a choice at all. I could never go on with my daily life now that I've begun to think about it. Suddenly, it seems like something I'm meant to do, cheesy as that sounds.

I wonder what sparked all these thoughts. I hear the high-pitched noise all the time, and it's never been more than an annoyance to me up to now. But suddenly, whenever I hear it - it's been going on for days - I feel and odd tug in my paws as I wonder what it would be like if I answered the call, left my home, and became a cyber-cat.

The thought is still bizarre.

I tell myself it's just a phase. If I give in to the urge, I'll regret it within a week. But yet…the thoughts persist.

Then, five days later, Ray goes online and the page won't load. The Internet is down, and the sound I hear has changed to a rapid pulsing, signaling that they're in desperate need of more cyber-cats. In a heartbeat, I make up my mind. _I_ will _become one,_ I vow. _The moment Ray leaves, I'm going to join the Internet._

Making the decision like so quickly like this scares me. I find myself trying to talk myself out of it. But I'm sure of my choice, and despite the jolt of panic that paralyzes me momentarily when Ray finally stands up, I shake it off and leap up onto the chair as he leaves without giving myself time to hesitate. I'm shaking as I grip the mouse in both paws and move it carefully over the error page that's still on the screen. I've experimented with the Internet some when the humans leave the computer on, but this is something completely different…

Now, how exactly does one become a cyber-cat, you may be wondering? Well, guess what…I have no idea. So I Google it.

With my claws, I type carefully in the search bar, one letter at a time: how 2 becom cybr kat

Yes, I type in lolspeak. Sue me.

The first link that comes up is all written in lolspeak: sin up heer 2 becom a cybr-kat. Perfect. I move the mouse over it, but I hesitate before I press the button. Am I sure about this?

Click.

The page loads. I'm guessing it's the only site that will work with the Internet down. After all, this page is special.

This page is the portal between the Internet and reality.

I press the space bar to scroll down. There are a number of questions to answer. I take a deep breath and start filling in the boxes.

**ful naem (plz spel crectly):** sir cocoa fluffykins iv

**jendr: **mail

**age: **3 yeers

**plase ov resadens:** 712 tompsen av, souf st paul mn usa

**naems ov da hoomins yoo liv with: **ray n jennifer skelton

**inturnet browzer:** motsila firfox

Here there are a few more questions about what I know about the Internet and such, but all of them are marked as optional, so I skip over them. I don't know how much time I'll have before Ray comes back, and besides, I maybe don't want to admit that I know next to nothing about it.

Finally, at the bottom of the page, I come to this:

plz reed dis **contrat** n accept all da agreements.

I skim over the contract; mostly it's telling me what I already know. You can't ever go back, it's not their fault (wish I knew who 'they' were) if you die, you have to spend most of your time making the Internet run and not just go off and do your own thing, etcetera. I click the checkbox saying I accept and fill in their custom Captcha thing to prove I'm a cat (I have to translate a spoken 'meow' into English), but I let the cursor rest over the 'submit' button. I close my eyes. This is the true point of no return. By agreeing to this contract, I'm leaving my life for good.

I click the mouse.


	3. Chapter 3

I don't know what I expect to happen - maybe electricity crawling under my fur and incapacitating me, perhaps? Because that's what happens. I panic as my limbs jerk and twitch, and then suddenly I'm unconscious.

When I wake up, I find myself in a small white room. Nothing special or even particularly room-like about it - just a plain white box with me in it. Not even a door. I wait, apprehensive to know what will happen next.

Suddenly, the air in front of me seems to shiver, and an indistinct Minecraft-like figure flashes for a moment before solidifying into a more high-quality image of a dark tomcat. I blink. The tom appears to be of a resolution you might see on an LCD screen - except that he's 3D. Weird.

"Hello," he greets me coolly, as if he's used to the kind of dumbstruck looks that I realize sheepishly I'm giving him now. "Name's Charcoal."

"H - hello," I stammer. "I'm Cocoa." I can only really think of one thing to ask. "Where am I right now?"

"We call this the Chamber of Death," he says. "Don't worry, it's just a nickname. It's sort of the in-between place where you transition from the real world to the Internet."

"Okay, so…what happens here?"

"Oh, I just prepare you for burial." The tom laughs as my eyes pop wide. "I'm kidding! I'm just here to make sure you're ready and send you on your way." I decide I don't like Charcoal very much.

"So what questions do you have about cyberspace? Now's the time to ask 'em."

"Umm…" _Where do I start? I don't even know enough to _ask _any intelligent questions!_ Suddenly I'm wondering whether this is a good idea at all. Did I jump in too quickly? "Can you just start from the beginning?"

Charcoal frowns. "We don't have that much time. But usually the master will assign you a partner to show you the ropes over a few days once you get there; they can answer some more of your questions."

"Hold up. Master?" This is seeming more and more like some bizarre video game quest.

"The head of Clowder 19, where you'll be placed."

"Clowder 19?" If I had so many questions before that I couldn't even come up with any questions, I have even more now.

"Cyber-cats are labeled in bunches, to make it easier to organize stuff. Yours happens to be the nineteenth."

"Okay…" That makes slightly more sense than just "Clowder 19" out of the blue (now that I think about it, I think I've heard 'clowder' as the official term for a group of cats), though still I have tons of questions, too many to ask right now. _I hope I can get all the answers I need from this partner, because I'll be kicking myself if there turns out to be something I can only ask Charcoal._

"Your partner should be able to answer most of your questions," he assures me, as if he read my mind. "If not, there's always the master."

I find myself nervously considering whether he might actually be able to read thoughts. Who knows what's possible in cyberspace?

"Okay," I reply. "Is there anything else you're supposed to do here?"

"Nope. I can send you on your way anytime you're ready."

"Alright. Then…I guess I am."

Before I have time to wonder what he's going to do, Charcoal waves his tail in a wide sweeping motion. It stretches into a rainbow and weaves around us, a cheesy display of bad graphics in 3D. But I'm too bewildered by the whole thing to care about the quality of the graphics. The rainbow consumes my vision, a weird tingling spreads over my body, and then I'm in a different place entirely, Charcoal nowhere to be seen.

I feel different, almost like I'm weightless.

I look down. I'm standing in the middle of a wide, dusty circle on the ground. Scrubby bushes surround it on one side, while the other side slopes down toward a cluster of four or five of what look like low reed huts. They must be where the cyber-cats sleep. Funny, I thought cyber-cats didn't need to sleep. I pad forward curiously, heading down the grassy slope toward them.

Now, I've been an indoor cat all my life - I've never walked on grass before. But something tells me your paws aren't supposed to go right _through_ the stems. This grass is rigid, not blowing in the breeze or anything, and it doesn't seem to be really there. Just another reminder that this isn't real life.

_Speaking of which, get a load of that stream over there! _I gape, wide-eyed, as I notice the stream that cuts across the hillside - it's _rainbow._ I dash over to get a better look.

Peering closely at the spray of color, I realize that in every airborne droplet are three distinct colors: red, blue, and green. Of course! This world is like a 3D computer screen, and the water magnifies the pixels. Squinting cross-eyed at the air in front of me, I try to see them without the water, but it's not nearly as interesting as watching the stream flow by in a cascade of colors. It's mesmerizing.

"So you're the new guy. Sir Cocoa Fluffykins IV?" A voice behind me nearly makes me jump out of my fur. I turn around to see a pretty white she-cat.

"That's me," I respond shakily.

"Welcome to Clowder 19. I'm Summer, the master of this clowder."

So this is the master. Suddenly I'm dying to ask her hundreds of questions that I didn't ask Charcoal, but I don't. Not yet.

"Hello," I greet her simply instead.

Something has fully dawned on me now, that I failed to take note of when it happened. I'm in cyberspace, and this is the central camp of Clowder 19.

I'm officially a part of the Internet.


	4. Chapter 4

"So," Summer says, "what questions do you have?"

I blink. "Wasn't that what the white room with Charcoal was for?"

"Yes, but everyone knows nobody ever really asks him anything. The real questions start when you get here. Every cyber-cat has been through that, even ones who grew up knowing they'd eventually become one."

"What do you mean?"

"Some families have a long history in cyberspace. A few even go back to when the Internet first started using cats to sustain it."

I didn't know there was a time before the Internet was made of cats. "What was it before that?"

"Information, codes, and wires. It wasn't long before they realized cats were efficient at keeping things running, but after they started the cyber-cat program, we learned how to govern ourselves and they forgot all about us. Just as well. We don't need humans trying to run our lives."

"Wow." I never realized there's so much about the Internet I didn't know, but now I wonder whether I might regret becoming a cyber-cat. Not that there's anything bad in what I've learned so far, just the uncertainty of the basic functions of cyberspace…mainly the realization that I still don't even know what cyber-cats do or how they run the Internet.

I intend to ask Summer that, but another question finds its way out of my mouth. "What are the huts for? I thought cyber-cats didn't need to sleep."

"They don't. The huts are actually portals into the main part of the Internet. This area is isolated from everything else; only cyber-cats can get here."

"Why is it isolated?"

"If you can get to Google from here, you can get here through Google. It's a way to prevent humans from getting to our camps."

I blink, trying to picture humans storming through here. What does a human's presence on a website even look like to a cyber-cat?

Before I can ask anything else, Summer says, "You still need your partner, don't you? One moment." She leaps gracefully through the flap in the nearest hut and disappears. Literally, she vanishes on the spot. I'm still staring dumbly through the window at the place where she was last when suddenly she reappears. She's still alone.

"I just emailed your partner. He'll be here in a few seconds."

_Cyber-cats have email?_

Not a moment later, a black tom leaps from the flap in another hut nearby. He trots over to me and Summer, dipping his head respectfully to the clowder's leader.

"You wanted me?"

Summer nods. "Yes, this is Sir Cocoa Fluff - "

"Cocoa," I interject, embarrassed. Guess she never learned what I go by.

"Sorry. This is Cocoa; Cocoa, this is Jet. He's going to show you around and explain what's what around here.

Jet blinks in surprise; I guess he didn't know about this beforehand. But all he says is, "Yes ma'am."

I can't help but notice the way Jet is treating Summer with such deep respect. Is the way I've been talking to her acceptable? What kind of courtesy is standard around here? I have so much to learn.

Meanwhile, Summer gives a slight nod and disappears into one of the huts. Jet shrugs and turns to me.

"So, new, huh? How was the trip?"

"Strange," I answer honestly.

Jet nods. "I remember when I first joined the Internet. It was maybe…five years ago now? Wow, time goes by fast. I still remember the humans I used to live with. The Briertons."

I'm dying to ask him more about his life before he became a cyber-cat. But I know that the present is more important. Where do I even start?

"Can you, you know, show me around some?" I ask, feeling awkward talking to Jet, who I've only just met, but still eager to go on to explore the inner workings of the Internet. "Sure," he replies. "Where do you want to start?"

"Wherever you think is best," I say, happy to let Jet take the lead.

"Well, I guess I could show you Cheezburger. It's sort of the heart of the Internet, at least for us cyber-cats."

"Works for me."

I follow him through the cat flap in the nearest hut, the one where Summer disappeared. Once inside, I stand uncertainly on the woven floor. Somehow this feels like something I ought to know, but I really have no clue how to get to the rest of the Internet from here. "Now what?"

"Just close your eyes and…I dunno, just do what seems natural. How do _you_ think you'd get out of here?"

"I don't know, that's what you're supposed to be here to show me!" But all the same, I close my eyes, trying to sort of draw my consciousness through the fourth dimension somehow. It would help, though, if I knew which direction that was.

I don't know what happens, but suddenly I feel a really weird flying sensation, and my eyes fly open. I'm back in a white room again, this time with a narrow white box in the middle of it and the letters **'Google'** suspended above my head. The universal search engine to take you anywhere in the Internet you want to go.

This is it. For the third time today, I'm preparing to enter a completely new world.


	5. Chapter 5

I dash across the sky, leaving behind me a bright pixellated trail of color. I just love it, flying across the galaxy faster than the speed of light. I spot a cluster of cupcakes (yes, floating in space) and dash over, swallowing all of them.

Yep, the one and only Nyan Cat at your service. Well, not really at anyone's service, haha. I do what I please.

You can stop staring at any time now. Yes, I'm real. Although, for the sake of your poor human minds, I should clarify that I'm only real in a virtual sense. I exist only on the Internet. That doesn't make me any less real, though.

If I've confused you poor souls, let's just stop at "I'm real." Why do I even bother explaining these things? You're humans. (No offense, of course.)

I take a few spins around the grainy depiction of a small rocky planet, munching on a cookie I find. It's quite an interesting experience traveling at twice the speed of light. The fun thing about being made out of pixels is that you get to break all kinds of rules about relativity and crap. The view is absolutely bizarre when you're going faster than the light you're seeing, but I do it all the time, so I'm used to it.

Eventually I decide to go back to "Earth" (really the cyberworld that represents it), where the rest of the Internet is located. I grab one last floating ice cream cone, and, quickly folding through the fourth dimension, I get there in a fraction of a second.

Upon arrival, I soon find myself being annoyed by almost everything. All the cyber-cats nearby drop what they're doing and come to welcome me. I look around. Pictures and gifs are flashing at me by the dozen - of _course_ I had to land right in the middle of Tumblr. Why do I come here at all? I don't even like this planet.

Of course, this Earth and its inhabitants are basically the only thing _in_ the Internet, since it's where the people are that created it. There are vague depictions of other planets and stars out in space, and of course there's food, but Earth is where almost everything is. Sometimes I like the fact that outer space is so quiet. Today I just find it annoying that there's no middle ground between nothingness and…_this._ I look forward to the day Google Earth is able to extend beyond Earth - but by the time they have any kind of decent-quality image, Mars will probably be as bad as Earth is, at least here in cyberspace. Cyber-cats are even quicker to inhabit a new territory than humans are, mainly because they're not limited by money.

Sometimes I wish I had access to higher dimensions. See, the thing is that several alien species have developed social networks similar to (and much better than) our Internet. But since they're _not_ the Internet, they're all on different planes of existence. If I could get there, I'd be much happier than I ever will be here. It's, I guess you could say, a fantasy of mine. But it's about as likely to come true as those fangirls' dreams of marrying some celebrity - no, less likely, because at least those celebrities exist in their universe.

I've long since left Tumblr now, and I'm aimlessly wandering the "streets" of the net and wondering what site wouldn't be too horrible to visit. 99% of the ones that are well-known at all are social sites, which definitely don't agree with me. But I'm in the mood to watch Charlie the Unicorn right now; I feel sort of sympathetic with Charlie at the moment.

Slipping into the all-permeating existence of Google, I type the title into the search box. I wait a moment before I press 'enter.' I like the quiet room of the Google homepage; it lets me relax for the first time since I got to Earth. But that little blinking cursor seems to be staring at me, reminding me that Google isn't a place to hang around. Sighing, I go on to the search results and click the first one.

You want to know what I'm typing and clicking with, I suppose. My mind, of course. You didn't really think that as a part of the Internet, I wouldn't have some sort of telepathic connection with it, did you?

YouTube isn't quite as crowded as usual today, or maybe it's just this video that doesn't attract as many cyber-cats. Either way, I'm glad to be able to relax slightly as I watch it, laughing along with the video and wincing in understanding of Charlie's misery and exasperation.

Now, you'd think we'd be free from ads when we're on the _fricking inside_ of the Internet, wouldn't you? Of course not. Usually they don't bother me much, but today it's one of those rollover games where you shoot the Pop-Tart into the toaster. As you may be able to guess, Pop-Tarts being toasted and eaten makes me slightly uncomfortable to say the least. I watch the rest of the video the best I can, but I'm unable to pay attention due to the ad, replaying its demonstration over and over. Hey, you wouldn't want to watch an ad where people were cooking up humans for fun, would you? Sometimes I hate being made out of food.

As I watch the rest of the video, my thoughts begin to wander to everything that's annoyed me since April 2011. By the time it's over, I realize that what I'm really searching for is to be seen as a living being. Sure, I'm a cultural icon, but am I any more? Nobody seems to know me as anything more than that awesome Pop-Tart cat on the Internet - absolutely no personality is represented. Some people don't even know I'm a guy.

I think about how much I hate all of the Internet, both the chaos of Earth and the emptiness in space. I think about the way people either dismiss me as annoying or love me without knowing what I am. And something shifts inside of me.

I'm tired of everything. There's nothing for me here. I've got nothing to lose…and everything to gain, I realize maliciously.

_All right Internet. Get ready to bow to a new leader, because I'm done being the good guy._

And then I think…why stop at the Internet? I could have the world. I could have anything I want. Because as you'll soon find out the hard way, dear human, I do what I please.


	6. Chapter 6

Jet "loads" beside me in the same way that Charcoal appeared in the Chamber of Death. "So, Cheezburger," he says, as if it had been nothing. Letters appear in the box in front of us, spelling out the name of the site.

"Hold on. How does it know where you want to go?"

"Oh, I'm spelling it out telepathically," Jet explains. _Of course, why didn't I think of that._ "Everyone on the Internet can. Why don't you try it?" The letters disappear from right to left, as though he were deleting it. He nods toward me, inviting me to type in myself. "Picture where each letter is on a keyboard," he tells me.

My head is starting to hurt from all of these new things going on at once. "N - no thanks," I stammer. "You can do it. Maybe next time I will."

Jet frowns. "You're not going to learn how if you don't try it."

"I know, but right now I just want to learn my way around. My head hurts too much to be doing any telepathic typing."

"Suit yourself. You'll have to do it next time, though."

The letters _C-H-E-E-Z-B-U-R-G-E-R_ reappear rapidly, and a pain goes through my head as the world blinks to white before the results page loads from top to bottom. I shake my head to clear it, disoriented by all the weird flashing going on as we're transported from one page to the next.

Already Jet is padding over to the first result, placing his paw on the row of blue text that makes up the title - **Cheezburger: **All your funny in one place. It's amazing how confident Jet is in this world that's completely alien to me. But I'll get used to it, eventually.

The same transition thing happens again, and I brace myself as the page changes around me. The Cheezburger front page is a long, wide hallway. Pictures line one wall, while advertisements hang above a row of cat flaps on the other, and a couple of cyber-cats patrol further down. On the end where Jet and I are standing, a turquoise bar has a bunch of labels like I Can Has and FAIL Blog. I don't know what any of them mean.

"Where do you want to go?" Jet asks me, gesturing to all the different options with a sweep of his tail.

"Can I just look around here?" Some of the pictures in this hallway look interesting. As Jet shrugs and nods, I wander to the nearest one, a gif of a turtle rolling on its back. It's really pretty cute.

I continue slowly down the hall, looking at each picture as I go by and occasionally stopping to read something. Sometimes the humor misses me, often with the ones labeled 'ROFLrazzi' - and I also still don't understand what the labels are. All I do know is that most of these pictures are really funny.

There's one that I see that strikes me as interesting more than funny, labeled 'The Daily What.' It has what looks like a screenshot from a game, and the description says, "Millions of players of the popular app _Nyan Cat: Lost in Space_ have been outraged by a new issue in the game: that the Nyan Cat character fails to appear, making gameplay impossible. IsTom Games says they have no idea what caused the issue, and every attempt to fix the glitch has failed."

I find it odd but not particularly significant, and I continue to the next picture, a conversation on a site called Cleverbot that's full of references I don't get, but seems funny all the same.

"So why is Cheezburger 'the heart of the Internet' for cyber-cats?" I ask Jet.

"Well…" A turquoise bar like the one at the end of the hallway pops up out of the floor. Jet walks up to it and puts his paw on the first button, 'I Can Has,' and in the big white box that pops up, he selects 'Lolcats.'

The transition happens again, but this time the loading doesn't disorient me as much and the pain in my head isn't quite as severe. Though still slightly dizzy, I'm able to act like nothing happened as I follow Jet over to the first picture.

But the first picture isn't what I care about. Cats…cats _everywhere!_ As I look down the hall, all I see are pictures of cats, and most of them are captioned in lolspeak. Bad lolspeak, mind you - it's clear these are actually humans making these - but somehow this place makes me feel right at home.

Suddenly, without warning, the page refreshes, and I'm completely unprepared for the chaos. Panting and dizzy, I look around for Jet, but he's nowhere to be seen. _What just happened? Where's Jet?_

Just then, the black tom appears from one of the cat flaps further down. "Sorry," he says. "That was a gif glitch, they're not too uncommon. It's fixed now, though."

"Am I supposed to know what a gif glitch is?"

"It's when there's a bug in a certain gif that makes the page refresh every time the gif loops around. It's one of those things that nobody in the real world knows about since it always gets fixed so quickly."

"But how did you know what it was so fast?"

"Experience. I've seen these happen hundreds of times."

I glance at him dubiously, wondering whether he just made a lucky guess, but all the same, I ask, "Are you going to show me how to fix them?"

"That'll take a while to learn, since you'll have to learn computer coding. Us cats are pretty quick at picking it up, though. I don't think there'll be much trouble."

He motions me to follow him through the cat flap, into a dark room full of wires, buttons, and text. He explains what was wrong with the gif and what he did to fix it. Though I don't understand much of it yet, it doesn't seem that hard to learn.

_So this is my new life, _I think with mild satisfaction. _It's not that bad at all. I think I made the right decision._


	7. Chapter 7

Over the next few days, I begin to learn my way around the Internet. I still don't have a wide knowledge of websites, but I know the main ones, and I can navigate them fairly well. Gradually I'm learning to type telepathically—thought it's not easy learning the way a keyboard is laid out without a keyboard to look at—and I've even fixed a few glitches by myself, albeit not very quickly. It's surprisingly easy to forget the things I miss in my old life as I learn more and more about the incredible world of the Internet.

Every 24 hours, in what we call the "morning" (there's no day and night here), Clowder 19 gathers back in their camp for a head count. I was amazed the first time when I saw the size of the clowder, probably around forty cats. And Clowder 20, gathering on the other side of the rainbow stream a short distance away, also added to the effect—I had never seen so many cats in my life.

I'm starting to get to know Jet. He's pretty cool, and I think he'll be a good friend. Thanks to him, I've already started to feel at home in the Internet. And even though there's not a lot of interaction with the other cyber-cats, just the fact that they're around keeps me from feeling so isolated the way I did back home.

Home. Yeah, I still think of Ray and Jennifer's house as home. As much as I've started to feel comfortable in cyberspace, it still pains me to think that I'll never go back again. I don't think I'll ever stop missing them completely—I did love them, you know.

But there's not much time to be spent missing my old life, as I continue to learn about the Internet and its bizarre properties. Did you know that cyber-cats basically have web browsers inside their minds? I've finally mastered the pulling of the address bar from, I don't know, somewhere in my head, so that I can travel to whatever site I want. (Assuming I can type it in. I'm still getting the hang of that.)

I'm browsing Know Your Meme, which I've come to learn is a pretty good source for keeping up on what's new on in the Internet, when Jet suddenly materializes beside me.

"There you are! Listen, there's been an attack—a dozen cyber-cats were killed. There's a huge panic." His eyes are wide and serious.

"An attack? Where? How? By who?"

"An explosion, right in the middle of Twitter. A bunch of profiles are in ruins. We don't have any idea who did it."

"But what can we do about it?"

"Come on. There's a lot to fix. We have to go fast, and get it back to normal before the humans start to get really worried." By the time he's finished speaking, he's already gotten us there.

The first thing that strikes me is the sheer number of cats in the room. There must be at least seventy, maybe a hundred. Everyone is crowded into the tiny room and shoving one another, and I have to brace myself just to stay on my feet. _Where's Jet? _I think desperately. I don't see him anywhere.

The second thing I notice is that the whole room seems to be bent out of shape from the force of the explosion. Jet's already explained to me that that's really bad. The walls are supposed to be rigid, and something powerful enough to bend them is also powerful enough to cause a serious rift in cyberspace.

Some cats are lining up at the wall, where they're moving the cracked floor tiles row by row to fix the code underneath and make it level again. Most of the others appear to be fixing broken links, all of which were disabled in the blast. Jet, I realize, is among them. I dash over to him.

"How can I help?" I demand.

"Hold on one second." He's taken a link down from the wall and is fixing the code underneath. Looking at it makes me feel dyslexic or something, because it's all jumbled up and the letters are misshapen, and they keep switching around as Jet fixes it. Finally he's gotten it back in order, and he picks the link back up and puts it on the wall, where it's activated again.

He takes down the next one, explaining to me what he's checking for and how he's fixing it. He's got it back to normal in seconds, replacing the link and moving on down the wall.

"It looks like you have this covered okay," I say. "I don't want to get under your paws. And a lot of this page looks pretty well under control."

"There are other profiles that got messed up," he advises me. "This isn't even where the explosion happened; this is a secondary effect because this person's link was on that page. This happened to dozens of other people; I'm sure you can find somewhere to go."

"Wow." I don't even want to _know_ what the original place of the explosion looks like. Shrugging, I choose a nearby link at random.

The page it takes me to is in as much chaos as the first, even as it's clear that it hasn't gotten as much attention. I don't hesitate to get to work, making myself useful by joining the (smaller) team of cats fixing the floor.

Now, the floor might seem like a strange thing to spend time on, since the humans won't actually see it in the end, right? But the thing is, it seriously does affect the way the page behaves. If it's been blown out of shape, it will barely even work, or so Jet has told me. All elements of the Internet are important to the way it functions.

But what bugs me most in this is the fact that it happened at all. Who would bomb somebody's Twitter page? Why? And who's to say it won't happen again?


End file.
